thoroughly delighted

[aryanhwy]

Tomorrow morning we're all getting up far earlier than we'd like to, to take a bus, a train, another bus, a plane, another plane, another bus, and another train to get from Durham to Bolzano, where we'll get two full days before doing the trip in reverse. Recently I obliquely mentioned that I scored a family invitation for all of us to Italy, and that's this. In early Nov. our friend Tarek, whom we've known since he did the logic year at Amsterdam and who is one of those people who is in the "friend" rather than "academic colleague" category (he's in the hug upon meeting category of people; he's crashed at our place in Tilburg) emailed me saying "Hey, we just discovered we have this budget to use up before the end of the year, want to come to Bolzano to give a Digital Humanities talk?", and since the only days that would work for everyone involved would have me gone for a weekend, meaning Joel wouldn't have been able to do any work on the house anyway, as he'd be in charge of Gwen, I figured I'd be a bit cheeky and say "Hey, if you've got all this budget to use up before the end of the year, why don't you invite BOTH of us, and we'll pay for Gwen?" It's not something I'd ordinarily do, but Tarek is a friend of both of us, AND he has, in the past, been quite accommodating about the whole "kids" issue: Nearly 4 years ago now he invited me to come to Osnabrueck (where he was at the time) to give a short course on medieval logic, and my reply was "I'd love to! I'll have a 5 month old baby that I'll (presumably) still be nursing. You organize childcare for her, and I'll come), and he did.

That trip was Gwen's first visit to Germany -- country number 4 -- and it was great fun to bring her with. So I'm thoroughly delighted about this trip -- I get to talk Joel to Italy! This will be Gwen's 19th country! Tarek will get to meet Gwen again! Our two talks together will be better than one alone! It should be much fun.